


Mo Ghile Mear

by greygerbil



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, blood-drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-26 12:26:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17745902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Sean didn't expect to have much to do with Geoffrey McCullum, but somehow, they keep running into each other.





	Mo Ghile Mear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scorpiod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/gifts).



> Hello! Your prompts were lovely and I hope I managed to make something nice out of them with this treat.

The first time Sean met McCullum was at the gate of Pembroke Hospital. He was here to ask for help with old Miss Landon, who was not likely to make the week as things looked, and in his haste bumped into the man. He was tall and dark-haired, with broad shoulders held square at full tension, and deep-set eyes that made him look permanently gloomy, not helped by a mouth that naturally seemed to pull downwards; but then, perhaps that was just the sight of Sean.

“You must be Reid’s Skal,” he said.

For a moment, Sean thought on who but Reid and Swansea would know about him for any reason. The man before him was an Ekon, he could tell, his new senses providing him such insight as much as his accumulated knowledge of the last ten years spent learning from Old Bridget about the world of vampires. There was only one more progeny Reid had that Sean knew of: Geoffrey McCullum, leader of the Guard of Priwen, of all things. Considering the man facing him now had a sword belted to his side, Sean figured it was as good a guess as any. 

“And you must be Dr. Reid’s hunter, sir,” he gave back, the answer proof enough that he had not quite managed to stifle his annoyance about being classed property.

McCullum’s mouth pressed into a thin line. Apparently, he liked it even less.

“Never seen a maggot like you.”

Though the temptation to keep countering him was there, Sean squashed it. It was not right to get into squabbles with strangers. From what little he knew of Geoffrey McCullum, it was understandable he would not be in the best of moods these nights.

“Dr. Swansea tells me my sort of Skal is quite rare, as the Brotherhood of Saint Paul’s Stole has never heard of them,” he answered, mildly, “and that I have some hopes of retaining my sanity. I hope you share his conviction, Mr. McCullum.”

McCullum snorted.

“Make sure Swansea doesn’t pin you with a needle and keep you in a display case when you go in,” he just muttered, pushing past him. “And don’t give me a reason to put you on my blade.”

Sean watched him march down the dark street for a moment before he resumed on his way.

-

Sean had not thought of his meeting with McCullum in a few days when he ran into him again in the West End. Still leafing through the pamphlet Ben had given him even as he walked, his worried throughts were suddenly interrupted when something wrapped around his neck from behind, pulling him tight enough to squeeze his throat shut.

“Too late, you’re already dead,” said McCullum’s voice as Sean scrambled at his arm. He let go off him. “Are you mad to be wandering here at this hour?”

“Why?” Sean asked, trying to calm his racing heartbeat as he looked up at him. For a man so big, he could walk awfully quietly!

“The Ascalon Club is a street away. Do you think they would like you very much? Their hound was busy picking off Skals until Reid ran into him and put him down.”

“Well, you are here, and I would wager they have much more reason to be angry at you, do they not?”

McCullum raised a brow. They slowed their steps until they came to a halt before the dead black windows of a tailor’s shop.

“I can defend myself, and I need to keep an eye on their doings from time to time. But you – Reid tells me you run that night shelter by the docks?”

“I may not be much of a fighter, but I hope they would give me an opportunity to speak, at least, and explain myself. I mean no harm to anyone, after all.”

“That’s a plan that works out until you’re at the wrong end of someone’s knife.”

Sean smiled a little. Though McCullum was rather imposing and not a man of soft words, it became clear to him it seemed to be an instinct of his to get involved where he saw an opportunity to keep someone from bringing trouble down on themselves. He barely knew Sean, after all, and yet here he was lecturing him. Sean found himself partial to him for it.

“I’ve managed a shelter in the East End for ten years. You think I’ve never looked down the blade of a dagger before, or the barrel of a gun?” Sean leaned his head to the side. “Though I appreciate your concern for my well-being.”

McCullum huffed. “Don’t take it personally. I just know the docks – or rather, I know I don’t know them as well as I should, because the Guard never had much of a presence there. But there’s no other places like yours around those parts. If you get taken out traipsing about the West End, there’ll be a boatload of people on the streets at night, drunk and weak ones. With as many Skals and beasts as we’ve had since the epidemic, they’ll end up someone’s supper for sure.”

“Then I appreciate your concern for my flock,” Sean said, undaunted.

McCullum rolled his eyes, but Sean thought he’d seen the shadow of a smile on his lips when he’d turned his head towards the light of a gas street lamp.

“What are you even doing out here? I doubt your _flock_ ends up in the West End much.”

“That’s usually true, but in fact, one man I used to know just moved in here with some other dock workers and I thought I’d visit. He, well…” Sean frowned down at the crumpled piece of paper in his hands. “I suppose he has found God, in a way, which of course I am happy about. Still, this priest does not seem all the way a decent man to me, I’m sorry to say. He’s very restrictive with his people.”

“I hear you know of bad priests.”

Sean took the words for what they were: not a comment on Ben’s story, but a warning that McCullum had been asking around about him. So the hunter was keeping tabs on him. Sean figured that was natural, being who he was, but if McCullum said he had an interest in keeping him alive, then perhaps it was not a bad thing altogether. Even if McCullum did not enjoy his presence, Sean might still at least gain his trust, over time.

“I do know that all humans are fallible, even the ones speaking the Lord’s word,” he said, looking up at McCullum. “And I know some misuse the trust placed in them, which I personally find a damned shame.”

McCullum seemed to accept that as an implicit answer.

“So your boy is in a cult?” he asked, allowing the conversation to snap back to where Sean had left it.

“I fear so. Though of course people have called my asylum this on occasion. I do not agree with the church on everything myself, so it’s not something I’d censure without reason. But this priest is just collecting hard-working young men around himself to take what little money they bring home.” He shook his head. “There’s nothing to be done about it for now if he wants to stay, but I must keep an eye on Ben. He has no family left to do so.”

“Hard to get people back from that sort of place sometimes, especially the young ones with no ties.”

When Sean looked up with puzzled surprise at the comment that seemed far too weary to be just an impartial statement, McCullum just shrugged.

“Got quite a few sad, lonely young men and women in the Guard, too. I’ve lost them to these sorts of people at times, or its where they fled from before ending up at my doorstep. It tends to make me rather short with bastards like that priest, who lie to people to get their way,” McCullum explained, glancing at the pamphlet in Sean’s hand. “Of course, some recruits die on my watch. The Guard of Priwen is not a nursery. But I try to keep the rookies out of the worst of it, and I tell them up front there’s a chance they won’t come back, leeches being as strong as they are.”

There was a trace of regret in McCullum’s voice that Sean found himself honing in on. Perhaps this was the reason that, instead of hunting on his own, he still walked the much more difficult path of leading the Guard of Priwen, as Sean knew from the doctors Reid and Swansea.

“I think the Guard would be a much better choice than this,” Sean said, waving the pamphlet. “Perhaps even safer for the mind in the long run. At least their leader does not seem careless of his peoples’ well-being...”

McCullum looked at him for a moment. “Surprises me to hear you praise the Guard.”

Well, Sean feared them for the sake of Old Bridget and her people, but he had also seen that their commitment during the later nights of the epidemic, when you could barely walk down the street without being mauled by a feral Skal, had kept a whole lot of people alive, and had killed enough hunters in the process. Though perhaps somewhat too harsh, those were brave people.

“Your Guards have menaced some who haven’t deserved it in the docks, but they were also all we had for protection during that terrible November. The coppers and politicians sure don’t care about us, never have.” He smiled slightly. “I remember one night when I came back from a visit to a sick friend, one of your chaplains joined me and walked me home to the shelter, telling me it wasn’t save for me to roam by myself. He even frightened a few mad Skals off with his cross. It was very good of him.”

This got him a rough laugh from McCullum. “Not exactly what their purpose is, keeping maggots safe, but I suppose there’s not enough of your kind of Skal around that recognising you is so important.” He paused. “How come the cross gave you no trouble?”

“Oh, they never do,” Sean said cheerfully. It was something he’d been quite worried about for a while, but he still found peace before his shrine and could walk into any church he liked, and the cross around his neck didn’t bother him.

“I don’t understand.”

“Me neither, but I think I have just never been able to think of a holy cross as a weapon or something that should cause pain in any way. It makes me immune, but it also means my cross provided me no protection against my Maker.” He shrugged. “But if I still have the favour of the Lord, that’s all that matters.”

“I suppose that means if I have to take you out, I’ll have to think of something clever, since you don’t fear weapons nor symbols.”

He was playing with him, Sean thought, but that was better than the grumbling before.

“I admit that though I try to face weapons without fear, a knife or gun will give me trouble if I could not convince you to turn it away,” he conceded with a smile.

“Well, at least you know. And best remember it, Skal,” McCullum said as he turned away.

There had not been much of a warning in McCullum’s tone. Sean had a feeling that he was being told to take care.

“Have a good night, Mr. McCullum,” Sean said to his retreating back.

-

Sean crossed paths with McCullum a few more times through December, sometimes wandering the East End at night, seeing him up on a walkway at the beach or in the distance stalking between the crumbling houses, or at Pembroke, which, being the base for Reid and Swansea, had become a convenient spot to meet and talk of troubles that could concern them all, either with rabid vampires or the Ascalon Club (according to McCullum’s grousing, there wasn’t much of a difference). Though they did not speak again one on one, Sean thought that perhaps exposure to him was making McCullum a little less suspicious. At the very least he did not seem bothered by his presence alone anymore, had stopped narrowing his eyes at Sean and watching him like an angry guard dog.

Where he had not expected him to meet was the Whitechapel cemetery, though. There used to be feral Skals around, but Reid had made a concerted effort to round them up, and Sean’s own way past the graves had been undisturbed. As he spotted McCullum, though, he did not appear to be looking for a fight, anyway. In fact, he stood quite still before one of the graves.

Sean decided to leave him to his thoughts or grieving, as people needed time alone for these things, but when he moved, his shoe slipped on the uneven way and he accidentally kicked a pebble down the hill. Quick like a sleeping lion woken, Geoffrey raised his head.

“My apologies,” Sean said into the silence of the nightly graveyard. “I was just passing by.”

“What are you doing here, Skal?”

Since McCullum seemed to want to talk, Sean decided to join him, after all. Climbing up the last steps, he approached him. _Carl Eldritch_ read the gravestone that McCullum stood before. It didn’t look too withered yet, though moss covered its edges.

“I was praying for an old friend of mine. Near all who die at the shelter end up in the mass graves, I’m sorry to say. But Joanna had a richer brother who remembered her in death, at least, and had her buried here.”

“Guilty conscience?” McCullum guessed.

Sean sighed softly. He was unhappy to say anything bad about a man who had suffered a loss and certainly felt the pain of not having intervened sooner, but he remembered thinking at the time that with a little more care from her family back when she could still have made something of it, Joanna may not have succumbed to drink. She had been that sort of person, always grateful for scraps of attention thrown to her, more so than for any practical help. Yet, Sean had many people who needed him and in the end, his concern for her had not been enough when she really wanted it from her family whom she loved so dearly.

“Perhaps it taught him something,” Sean said quietly, “and in future, he will know that often, the time we have with people is shorter than we hope, and grudges carried too long may then never be resolved.”

McCullum hummed his assent, looking at the grave before him.

“Who is Mr. Eldritch?” Sean dared to ask.

For a moment, McCullum was quiet, and Sean would not have pressed the issue, but he did speak after all: “The man who raised me after my father got turned and killed my mother,” he answered. “He staked my father, ripped my mother’s heart out to be sure, cut off the heads of my older sister and her husband lying bloody on the ground, and took me in the same night. I only had to hunt my brother down after that, the last one left, but he helped with that, too.”

So that was how one started on the path to this kind of life, Sean thought sadly to himself, being a boy sitting in a lake of blood.

“I thank the Lord he found you before your father could do something to you, too,” Sean said. “It was kind of him to raise you.”

McCullum smiled a little. “Carl was not a kind man, precisely,” he answered, with a shake of his head, “though good to me. Maybe he saw something in me, some potential, or he just had a weak moment. I never found out. He can’t have taken in every orphan he’s seen made on account of leeches. I haven’t been a hunter near as long as he was at that point, and I’d already be raising a whole city if I did.”

Sean glanced at the grave. The first vampires he had met had been sweet people, really; wise Old Bridget and her skittish Sewer Skals. This made him always want to save what could be saved in a vampire, for he knew it was much. But had his first introduction been a feral Skal tearing through his shelter, would he have stood closer to McCullum’s side? Would he have felt that to protect the greatest amount of people a harder hand was needed?

It was not in his nature, Sean supposed, to be truly wrathful. Still, McCullum’s side of the story was not illogical. Besides, now that he himself was a vampire, the hunter had learned to make decisions that took into account more complex ideas of good and evil, if his debates with Swansea and Reid were anything to go by.

“I’m happy he’s already dead, everything being equal,” McCullum continued. “Not generally. But he’d have killed me, and I would have had to defend myself. Maybe I wouldn’t have.”

The frustration in his voice was a twisted sadness. Sean opened his mouth to speak some comfort, but McCullum cut him short.

“This is a long shot, but would you mind saying a few words of prayer for him?”

Taken aback, Sean looked at him. “I’m no priest, so I don’t presume to speak for the people to the Lord…”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m sure you could still put something together.”

“If that’s what you want…”

It seemed important to McCullum somehow, so Sean did not wish to deny him. He looked at the grey headstone, austere in its simplicity, and tried to call to mind Carl Eldritch, whom he had never met. In his head, he was a man a little like McCullum, for he must have soaked up some parts of him growing up, but perhaps harder still and crueller, if even someone as fierce as McCullum would call him more good than gentle. He certainly must have been a man of principles, too, and some that led him to do bloody things.

“Lord, into Your hands come those who have passed from this world, their bodies returned to the dust from which we were made,” Sean started, hands folded before his middle, eyes turned skywards. “Grant Carl Eldritch now eternal rest, away from sorrow and pain and the strife he knew in life. Do not let your child be parted from you, but through your mercy, let eternal light shine on him, and let him know forgiveness and peace. I pray for him and for those left behind suffering. Amen.”

Sean looked over at McCullum, who gave a small nod, gaze on the gravestone.

“Did you not have a priest here when he was buried?” Sean asked.

Not that he would have necessarily figured so, knowing little of McCullum, but if he wanted a prayer spoken, it seemed like the most expedient thing to do.

“The senior chaplain did the deed. It wasn’t a bad prayer, but most of it was just of the evil of this world. Felt like a call to a crusade, to be honest.” He scratched the back of his neck. “I’ve not much of a mind for religion these days, but I figured it’d be nice if eventually I could send Carl off with something that wasn’t just as brutal as his life – and his death. Let me tell you, there’s hardly half of his body in that casket, and even that’s badly assembled. I figured you probably wouldn’t go for the fire and brimstone.” He shrugged. “Well, he’s ten years dead now, it’s probably too late. God must have him sorted by now,” he added with a wry grin.

“It’s never too late for kind thoughts,” Sean said; and if it were too late for Carl, he’d at least be happy to have perhaps eased McCullum’s mind a little. “Especially not for – well, the last of your family, I assume.”

“Yes,” McCullum said. “I left the rest in a graveyard in Dublin many years ago. I haven’t visited them in a long time. Nice to hear the drawl sometimes, though,” he said, with a brief glance at Sean.

Sean smiled. 

“I had figured you were Irish, but your accent’s not as strong as mine. Somehow, I never shook it." He cocked his head. “Do you miss Dublin at all?”

“I miss the home of my childhood sometimes, my family, but that won’t be there even if I get on a boat and make over. There’s nothing for me there.”

Sean nodded his head. “I hope you were able to build a new home here.”

“Would you ever go back?” McCullum asked.

Sean hesitated. He used to think about it, sometimes; the stubborn streak in his nature, he supposed, wanted to prove that he would not be driven out of the city, just as he would not be driven out of his faith. A young and wounded part of him also still wanted to talk to some of the boys he had grown up with to convince them that he really hadn’t been lying then, that they could still be friends despite what the overseer had said about Sean. But that was just a twenty year-old wound that would not get better by tearing the scar open.

“No,” he said, finally. “I’m needed here and that’s good for me, too. I would only be tempted to do things that could cause me and others heart-ache.”

“I guess it might make someone upset if you walk into an orphanage with a shot-gun and take out a priest, yes,” McCullum said flatly.

“I would not do _that_.”

“Someone should.”

Sean shook his head. McCullum spoke with such conviction, and though he did not share his bloodlust, there was something calming in it. You generally knew where you stood with him. Those that hurt others were punished; the rest protected. If this could now be expanded to include those monsters who did no harm, then Sean figured McCullum would be as good a man to have in London as Reid for the safety of its inhabitants.

“It’s no wonder the Guard rallies behind you,” Sean said to himself.

McCullum looked at him with some confusion, but Sean did not elaborate, and so McCullum straightened, pulling his coat close.

“I should be on my way,” he said. “Good night.”

“Good night, Mr. McCullum.”

-

“If you walk around here all alone at this hour, Mr. McCullum, you might get in some trouble.”

McCullum winced and shot around from where he had been looking across the grey band of the river rippling under the rain.

“You sneak up on a man like that, it could get _you_ hurt, Skal,” he grumbled.

“At least I didn’t put you in a headlock, though.”

This reminder brought a bit of a grin to McCullum’s face, perhaps an admission that Sean had gotten the better of him in his harmless act of revenge.

“I ask really for mercy for the Wet Boot Boys,” Sean said, stepping up to his side. “I doubt you couldn’t take them, but I don’t think they’d be wise enough not to start the fight if they saw you out alone here in the middle of the night.”

“Lucky for them, the weather is making it difficult to get much observing done, anyway.” McCullum stared out into the thick rain for another moment before shaking his head. “Shouldn’t you heed your own advice, though?”

“Oh, the Wet Boot Boys don’t really come for me, thankfully. They are mostly local and few had money before joining up. Odd are I’ve seen them at the shelter, or their families, anyway.”

Still, the rain was coming down hard and Sean could feel it already on his skin through his clothes, so he walked with McCullum, who was heading up the stairs into the cluster of old, dirty, familiar streets of the Limehouse Docks.

“Skal,” McCullum said, not turning around to him. He stopped under a bit of roof jutting out into the street.

“Yes?” Sean asked, blinking rain drops away as he closed in to get out of the rush of water, too.

“I didn’t thank you for that prayer the other night,” McCullum said. “Not sure why I got so chatty with you but then forgot to mention that.”

“Oh, it’s no trouble at all. I think it might just have been the place – the forgetfulness and the need to talk,” Sean offered. “And some people do say I remind them of a priest, even if I’m not one. Perhaps an old need for confession...”

McCullum snorted.

“No, you don’t remind me much of our priest back in Dublin. Put the fear of God in me, that one. He didn’t like to speak of anything so much as hellfire, and listing to you why you’d end up there.”

Sean had to smile.

“I have known a couple of priests like that, too,” he admitted. “Their fervour was admirable, but it could lead to sleepless nights when I was a child.”

“If I had met more priests like are you, Skal, I might still go to church. Mind, if they were like you, they probably wouldn’t want me there.”

“I don’t have a church, Mr. McCullum, but you are certainly welcome at my shelter.”

McCullum answered him with just a brief nod.

-

Sean grabbed on to the wooden column supporting the footbridge over the beach, breath coming in short bursts. Lord, he hoped that thing had not followed him here.

When Old Bridget had told him that one of her new Skals had not returned home from what was supposed to be a short trip upstairs, Sean had offered to look for him, thinking perhaps he had just grown too sad to return into the tunnels under the city, which were not, by any stretch, a pretty place to live if you were used to the light of the moon or the sun; or worse, that he might be menacing some of Sean’s human flock outside, having lost control of his senses.

Instead, he found pieces of the Skal – Harry, his name had been, Sean knew, since he had talked to the shy young man at times – and a starved-looking sewer beast crouching above his cracked ribcage in a dark corner by the wall of the Royson distillery at west end of the beach. Sean had turned to run the moment the shock had let him, but the thing had gotten a good swipe in before he could get far, taking chunks out of his left hip with its claws. He’d only managed to save himself by taking a sharp left into the freezing, dirty water, which stung miserably in the wound. The beast had lost interest in the now-complicated chase and returned to its kill, and Sean had swum as far as his limbs could be forced to carry him and dragged himself out on all fours, shivering with the cold and the fear, spitting bitter water, his left leg barely able to carry his weight.

There were footsteps above him, creaking on the stairs. Sean lifted his gaze.

“I’m looking for a beast. Did you find it?”

Usually, Sean felt a little tension rising when he saw McCullum, never quite sure how the man would approach him; this time, it was all relief.

“I think so,” he managed, carefully unfolding one hand from its tight hold on the wooden pillar, hoping he would not fold as a result. He gestured down the beach. “It’s this way, all the way to the warehouse. It killed Harry.” The image flashed before his eyes again. Much more than even the terror of fleeing from the beast, which was mostly a rush in his memory, it seemed to press down on him, squeeze the air out of his lungs. “Oh my God, his face – it bit half of his face off, with the bone of the skull. And his arm was ten feet off from the rest…”

As he went on, somehow unable to stop himself, McCullum looked him up and down, gaze resting briefly on the bleeding wound at Sean’s side.

“Did you fall into the water?” he interrupted.

“Ah – the beast saw me, so I ran. I figured it wouldn’t go through the hassle of chasing into the river after me, what with… well, it went back to eating Harry, anyway.”

“That was a good idea,” McCullum said. To Sean’s surprise, he grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him over to the stairs. “Sit,” he ordered, but the way he pressed down on Sean’s shoulders didn’t leave him much of a choice, anyway. Because his own thoughts were at an end, all wrapped up around Harry in pieces in the wet sand, he looked up to McCullum for guidance.

“I’m taking care of this beast. You wait here for me.”

McCullum shook off his coat and wordlessly draped it over Sean’s shoulders. With a downward gesture of his hand, he reminded him once more to stay put before he turned around to stride down the beach.

Sean ran his fingertips along the rough hem of the coat and pulled it tighter around himself. Since he was sitting here in drenched clothes, it did little to warm him except to shield him from the wind, but the weight of it sat on his shoulders like a hand, and it smelled like McCullum, cold cigarette smoke and damp leather.

This, he realised, after a few deep breaths had cleared his head a little, was probably how McCullum approached the true innocents, the humans caught up in some horror they couldn’t comprehend, and his obvious shock must have afforded Sean the same care so he wouldn’t go do something silly.

The wind blew too hard in his ears to carry the sounds of a fight and Sean found himself peering anxiously into the darkness, which reached too far for even his eyes suited for the nightly hunt to penetrate. Finally, a shadow separated out of the black void. Blood was sprayed all across the front of McCullum’s shirt, but it didn’t look to be his.

“That’s done with. It was weak, it hadn’t fed in a while before it got your Harry, but even a starving beast is more than a match for a Skal,” he announced, halting before Sean. “I’ll get you back to your shelter now. Lots of other nasty things out in the street still.”

“Thank you,” Sean said and grasped the railing of the stairs, pulling himself up with some effort. McCullum grabbed on to his arm and helped him to his feet.

“Can you walk?”

“Yes, I think so.”

It hurt and his breath was already short. As a human, he wouldn’t have risked it, worried to aggravate the wound to a point where it might not heal. As a Skal, however, he could be sure that whatever he broke and tore would mend eventually, though the pain and open wound might stay with him for a while.

McCullum watched him stumble up half the staircase before he stopped.

“This is going too slow for me,” he claimed, and pushed past Sean a few steps downwards. “Get on my back.”

“What?”

“I can carry you like a bride if you’d like that better, but people might give us odd looks.”

Sean hesitated, but finally nodded his head, since McCullum did not look like he’d be argued with. He waited for him to turn and then put his arms around McCullum’s neck. It hurt when McCullum dragged his legs forward, but he held his thighs pretty steady from there, and walking would for sure have been much more uncomfortable – and slower. Though Sean was not the heaviest burden, he was a grown man, and he was quite impressed that McCullum just jogged up the stairs and down the street like he was carrying nothing but a travel bag. Sean, for his part, could only assist by making sure the borrowed coat did not fall off his shoulders.

McCullum sat Sean down in front of the gates of the shelter, presumably so they wouldn’t cause a ruckus going in. Sean handed him back his coat.

“I’m sorry, it’s damp now.”

“I’ll live,” McCullum said, waving his hand as he pulled it back on.

“It was really very nice of you to get me back. I’m sure I would have found my way.”

The confusion must have been too obvious in his voice, for McCullum huffed.

“As I said, I have an interest in keeping you alive, Skal, since you do the same for the humans here. But did you think all I did as a hunter was stake leeches? If I left people sitting around wounded and frightened in the dirt where those creatures live, most of them would end up dead by the end of the night, anyway, even if I killed their first attacker.”

“I misjudged you at first,” Sean admitted, freely. From all he’d heard of McCullum, he had thought that he would be a thug, more interested in the bloodshed of his business than anything else. However, that impression had waned for a while now. “Now I wish we had met when I was still a human.”

“Why so?”

“Because I like you, and if I weren’t a Skal, perhaps, in time, you might’ve liked me, too.” Sean pushed off the gate he’d been holding on to, wincing as he put weight on his left leg. Hopefully, he could slip into his office undetected. Coming home sliced up and wet would not actually be difficult to explain away in the East End, sad as that was, but he did not wish to worry anyone unnecessarily. “Thank you again for your help.”

McCullum remained silent, so Sean turned away. Over his shoulder, he saw that McCullum stood and watched him limp slowly across the yard towards the old warehouse and finally hurried off when Sean had a hand on the door.

-

“I haven’t seen any Ekons around here, aside from you and Reid. Are you sure your man is in the East End?”

Sean set aside the book he had been trying to string back together into something more than a loose collection of pages and looked up at McCullum, who shook his head.

“No, not really. I’m just following every lead. The feral Skals turned this city upside down and the beasts are no joke, but all these new-born Ekons from the time of the epidemic are proving to be the real challenge. Most of them still have enough mind left to be ten times as dangerous than some slavering monster.” McCullum shrugged his shoulders, leaning back against the closed door of Sean’s office. He looked exhausted, and from what Sean had understood, he’d been spending several nights stalking this Ekon. “I’ll figure it out. He can’t escape me forever, especially not with how many corpses he’s leaving behind.”

“No, I am thinking not,” Sean said, with a hint of a smile. From everything McCullum had ever said of his work when speaking to Swansea, Reid, and him at Pembroke, it seemed indeed like he had the tenacity of a hungry bloodhound. 

“Did you heal up all the way? From the beach?” McCullum asked.

“Oh… yes, mostly,” Sean answered. “It always takes a while, but I can move around and such. I had opportunity to feed, so it didn’t take long to start healing at all…” Though putting it as impersonally as that made him sick to his stomach, in truth.

“How so?” McCullum asked, with less distrust in his voice than Sean had expected. Sean held on to a the loosely assembled book.

“It was poor Mr Harris. He’d just shaken off his addiction to opium when the Spanish flu took him in three days. It’s such a shame. But… since he died here and has no relatives…”

Sean had almost choked on his tears pushing the pieces of grey, decaying meat around on his plate. It had all been a very sorry affair.

“Best choice,” McCullum said to his surprise. “I feed whenever I get a good chance, too, no matter how little I might like it. Better than to starve and become dangerous.” He frowned. “I’d eat corpses if I could. I’ll have to go out and find a fight to pick tonight, I waited too long. The Whitechapel sewers are still full to bursting with feral Skals. I just have to hope one gives me a chance to drink before another dozen jump on my back.”

“If you forgive my saying, that sounds a bit dangerous,” Sean answered.

“It’s better than drinking an innocent.”

There was such conviction in his voice that Sean could not but admire him. He was right, of course – putting himself at risk was, sadly, the best choice he had. Sean’s hunger was dampened by Reid’s treatment, but should he have ever come into a tight spot, he would have just had to make his way to the mass graves in Southwark or could even dig up a corpse from holy earth, much as the thought repulsed him. To call it a luxury seemed mockery, but was that not it? Unlike Ekons, he did not have to take from the living.

However, a thought came to him then. McCullum was going out there looking to drink from Skals…

“Sadly, I often have deaths to contend with. I feed regularly,” Sean said. “Why not drink from me tonight? That way, you wouldn’t have to put yourself in danger.”

McCullum looked confused, as if he was not sure what Sean was offering.

“Are you serious?”

“I would guess I don’t taste worse than any other Skal.”

For a long moment, McCullum regarded him, and Sean got a feeling that charity was not something he was used to, or perhaps comfortable with. He kept the smile on his face and waited.

“I’d owe you, Skal,” McCullum said slowly.

“Not at all. You have helped me, too.” Sean pointed at the chair closest to his. While he was at the other end now, he still had no mind to repeat what had happened between Reid and him. There was still the memory of poor William sucking from his arm intruding, too, but he hoped to keep that off by making this session more civilised. “Please sit down.”

As McCullum did so, Sean drew up the sleeve of his suit, which was a little too wide on him and slid up easily, and his soft shirt, exposing the pale flesh underneath. He held his arm out to McCullum, who covered the back of Sean’s hand with his own and grasped Sean’s elbow.

The tight hold caught Sean off-guard, though it was plainly just a convenient way to fix him in place. He did not usually get close to people, though, not skin on skin. Never searching contact himself, he had at times had people grab his hand to shake, hang on to him when they were sick or drunk, or simply pull him into a tearful hug. This was different, even though he was still in a position of helping someone. McCullum’s stubbly cheek dragged across the soft skin at his wrist and his lips brushed his skin searching for the perfect point to latch on to. A shiver took hold of him with no warning and McCullum stopped.

“Everything alright?”

Trying to ignore the feeling at the pit of his stomach that had him tempted to shift in his chair, Sean nodded his head.

“Yes, er – continue, please.”

McCullum turned his attention back to his hand. Sean could see his veins blue under the skin and when McCullum pressed his mouth on his wrist, feel the beat of his own pulse, perhaps a little faster than it should be. For an Ekon, it would only make it more attractive, so it was probably fine.

The bite was just two pricks, not like William tearing his flesh open like cheap meat. McCullum drank quickly and greedily, his throat moving as he swallowed. The sight was strangely hypnotic and could have been calming if the feeling of McCullum sucking on his skin like that would not have put Sean at the edge of his seat with a sort of prickling excitement he was not so used to.

Thankfully, McCullum pulled off before Sean could really be put into a compromising position, but the groan he gave did grab something in his core and rattled it. His arm still rested in McCullum’s grip as the man looked up at him, tongue dragging over his lips to catch the last of Sean’s blood, holding his gaze for a long moment with his piercing pale eyes, and Sean felt his face grow warm, wondering if McCullum could see, somehow, the unbidden thoughts that had come to him.

Finally, McCullum released him. It occurred to Sean that he could have simply pulled his arm away. McCullum straightened in his seat.

“Thank you, Sean-”

He stopped himself, frowning.

This finally settled Sean’s nerves a bit with pleasant surprise; he found himself chuckling.

“It’s just another four-letter word starting with ‘S’, I’m sure you could swap them out sometimes, Mr. McCullum.”

He wondered if perhaps McCullum had referred to him as something else than just ‘Skal’ in his head for a while, if it had slipped out like that. He did enjoy that thought.

Looking still vaguely annoyed with himself but half-smiling, McCullum got to his feet.

“Geoffrey, then,” he said, as he walked to the door.

-

“ _Marcach uasal uaibhreach óg, gas gan gruaim is suairce snódh, glac is luaimneach, luath i ngleo, ag teascadh an tslua ‘s ag tuargain treon_ …”

The shelter was uncommonly quiet for once, with all of his flock fled outside into a warm, early March night, and as Sean went about making the beds, he found himself singing quietly, his own mood swayed towards pleasant elation by the warm air and fair winds. Though _Mo Ghile Mear_ was in actuality a sad song about exiled Bonnie Prince Charles, Sean remembered it off the lips of an old nun from the abbey across the city that they would visit at times for mass. She had died before he turned ten, but he still had a clear memory of her sitting in the overgrown graveyard by the small old church, singing of her gallant darling to the trees. Though he could not say exactly where the inspiration for choosing that song had come from tonight, he was happy to sing the well-known lines, anyway: ‘noble, proud young horseman, warrior unsaddened, of most pleasant countenance, a swift-moving hand, quick in a fight, slaying the enemy and smiting the strong’.

“ _‘Sé mo laoch, mo Ghile Mear, ‘sé mo Chaesar, Ghile Mear_ -“

“- _suan ná séan ní bhfuaireas féin, ó chuaigh i gcéin mo Ghile Mear_.”

Sean jumped as his rendition of the chorus – ‘he is my hero, my gallant darling, he is my Caesar, gallant darling, I've had no rest from forebodings, since he went far away my darling’ – was finished by a rough voice behind him.

“If you join in, Geoffrey, you must sing, not just speak the lines,” Sean said, with a touch of embarrassment.

Geoffrey grinned lazily.

“I’ve no voice for singing, I didn’t want to ruin it.”

Lowering the pillow in his hands, Sean mustered a smile.

“Well, good evening, anyway. To what do I owe your visit?”

Halting, Geoffrey let his fingers play over the sheath at his side. “Nothing, really. Just came by, thought I’d look in on you.”

“Oh.” Sean put down the pillow. “That’s nice of you.”

Without prompting, Geoffrey grabbed one of the pillows and stripped it off its old case, taking one of the freshly washed ones from Sean’s stack. Sean had a feeling that he was not in the habit of paying friendly visits to people, if his immediate need to do something useful was any indication.

“Didn’t expect this, though. I figured that if I ever caught you humming to yourself, it’d be hymns, not a love song.”

“Would you prefer a hymn? I grew up in a Catholic orphanage, I know more than the bible has pages.”

Geoffrey snorted. “No, that’s fine. I can just about stand being around you, but if you start dredging up the songs from my childhood, I’ll just remember my old priest, and that I’m headed downstairs.”

Sean halted in his movement.

“Why would you be going to hell?”

“Why would I not be going to hell?” Geoffrey answered, raising a brow. “Either I killed enough innocents when I still followed Carl’s ethos, or I’m not killing guilty monsters now. Either would do it. Not to mention my two years in the war.”

“Still, you are not a malicious man, and you have done much to repent,” Sean protested. “I think you’re going to heaven.”

Geoffrey laughed out loud.

“I think your heaven would be exactly like earth, since you’d just let anybody in.”

“Not _anybody_.”

“Really?” Geoffrey took a step towards him, his lopsided grin a challenge. “How often have you thought ‘this person is going to hell, irrevocably, and they deserve it. In fact, I’m not even going to try to help them because there’s nothing good left there for me or God to discover’?”

This made Sean smile against his will.

“Alright,” he admitted. “I still think you would squeeze in even under stricter rules. Still, I happen to quite like the people of earth, so a heaven filled with them is not a bleak prospect to me, and I don’t think God is so resentful. ‘Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.’”

“John something-or-other,” Geoffrey said, half-smiling. “The priest I told you of didn’t like that one much.”

“John One Four,” Sean answered. “I am very fond of it. Most of it.”

“So I guess it makes sense you’d be singing love songs.” Pulling the fresh case over the pillow, Geoffrey threw it down on a mattress. “Which part don’t you like?”

“Ah, well, it’s not precisely that... it’s just good advice I can’t seem to follow.”

It was very rarely that Sean spoke about doubts or misgivings with the holy texts to anyone. His flock had made him a saint and that meant it was not good for him to muse at length over his own doubts and failings, even if he always said honestly that he had them; but they needed him strong. Even now he hesitated, but Geoffrey’s gaze seemed to pin him down as much as his grip had when they sat at the table.

“‘There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love’,” he cited slowly.

“What’s wrong with that?”

Sean turned away to fold a blanket. “I know my mother was probably just struggling when she left me at the orphanage – I have met many women like her here and they are not bad people. I bear her no ill will. But this, and then that other matter with the priest... it seems that from the first, I could not hold love even from those who should be most inclined to give it, or otherwise I attracted a twisted kind. That fear sits in me like rot now. My heart is no good for loving as God wanted me to. The couple of times I grew too close to someone, I became cowardly and I ran.” He smiled to himself. “No one likes to be reminded of their failures, but that is why this passage rings so true to me, of course.”

Covering a mattress with a sheet, he kept his back to Geoffrey as he spoke. Though he had said those things to God in prayer, it was different to give such a secret of his to another human – freeing and shameful and, well, frightening. And hadn’t Geoffrey always frightened him a little? First it was with his sharp words and blade, and then with the sudden impact his blood-sucking kiss had had on thim, and now, perhaps now it was that other, deeper kind. God, he should have kept his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself and to God. Hopefully, Geoffrey would just take his words as idle ramblings.

“Would you say that about anyone else, that they’re rotten?” Geoffrey asked, after a long silence.

“I would never judge another in this way. I can’t see in their soul.”

Sean straightened and turned to look at Geoffrey, wincing as he did so. Geoffrey stood a lot closer than he’d expected.

“And did you ever just tell those people you ran from why you left?”

“Of course not! I couldn’t imagine to mortify anyone with an insult like that. Wouldn’t I, in some way, be saying that I expect them to be cruel or careless? I don’t want to spread this taint and put sadness in anyone’s heart.”

Geoffrey’s fingers wrapped around his chin and he held it in place for a moment before he kissed him. Sean forgot how to breathe.

“There, remember I did that after you told me all this, the next time you are sweet on someone. You’re too harsh on yourself. Everyone is a sinner, isn’t that right? We’re all messed up down here,” he murmured, letting go. “I can’t fault you for keeping with God, but I’m just saying, some people might not mind the scarred part if they still got the rest of it.”

Geoffrey turned away, and whether the bravery had been transferred from him to Sean with the kiss, or spurred by his words, Sean found himself reaching out, tightening his hand in the sleeve of Geoffrey’s coat, wordless and clueless, really, for what he wanted, but taken by a sudden need to keep hold of the warmth that had gone through him at the touch of Geoffrey’s mouth.

Thankfully, Geoffrey was not so lost as him, and he kissed him again, hungry, like Sean’s words didn’t worry or repulse him at all, like they didn’t even matter.

Geoffrey eventually pulled his head back, placing another kiss on Sean’s forehead, heedless of the bruises and scrapes there that never seemed to want to heal, as he’d been heedless of his warnings of his equally ugly, battered heart.

“Let’s not do this here where people can see, since I might forget to stop,” he said, voice filled with sarcasm again, but gaze so honest.

God, Sean was afraid, terribly so; but he would stay put this time, he decided, clinging to Geoffrey’s arms.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to listen to the song Sean sings, [here on Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxjvNUNXhkU) is a great version of it.


End file.
